Peroxisome Proliferator Activated Receptors (PPAR's) are members of the nuclear hormone receptor super family, which are ligand-activated transcription factors regulating gene expression. Various subtypes thereof have been identified and cloned. These include PPARα, PPARβ also known as PPARδ), and PPARγ. There exist at least two major isoforms of PPARγ. While PPARγ1 is ubiquitously expressed in most tissues, the longer isoform PPARγ2 is almost exclusively found in adipocytes. In contrast, PPARα is predominantly expressed in the liver, kidney and heart. PPAR's modulate a variety of body responses including glucose- and lipid-homeostasis, cell differentiation, inflammatory responses and cardiovascular events.
Diabetes is a disease in which a patient's ability to control glucose levels in blood is impaired, because he has partially lost the ability to respond properly to the action of insulin. In type II diabetes (T2D), often referred to as non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM), which afflicts 80–90% of all diabetic patients in developed countries, the Isles of Langerhans in the pancreas still produce insulin. However, the target organs, mainly muscle, liver and adipose tissue, exhibit a profound resistance to insulin stimulation, and the body compensates by producing unphysiologically high levels of insulin. In later stage of disease, however, insulin secretion decreases due to exhaustion of the pancreas. In addition to that T2D is a metabolic-cardiovascular disease sysndrome. Among the comorbidities associated with T2D are for example insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, hypertension, endothelial dysfunction and inflammatory atherosclerosis.
Current first line treatment for diabetes generally involves low fat—and glucose—diet and exercise. However, compliance can be moderate and as the disease progresses, treatment with hypoglycemic drugs, e.g. sulfonylureas or metformin, becomes necessary. A promising new class of drugs has recently been introduced that resensitizes patients to their own insulin (insulin sensitizers), thereby reverting blood glucose and triglyceride levels to normal, and thus abolishing, or at least reducing, the requirement for exogenous insulin. Pioglitazone (Actos™) and rosiglitazone (Avandia™) belong to the thiazolidinediones (TZD) class of PPARγ-agonists and were the first representatives approved for NIDDM in several countries. These compounds, however, suffer from side effects including rare but severe liver toxicity (as seen with troglitazone), and they increase body weight in humans. Therefore, new, better and more efficacious drugs for the treatment of NIDDM are urgently needed. Recent studies provide evidence that a coagonism on PPARα and PPARγ would result in compounds with enhanced therapeutic potential, i. e. with an improved lipid profile effect on top of the normalization of glucose- and insulin-levels (Keller and Wahli: Trends Endocrin. Metab. 1993; 4:291–296, Macdonald and Lane: Current Biology Vol. 5 pp. 618–621 (1995)).